Wednesday, December 19, 2012

For the past four years, I have done myannualDisgruntledAlphabet and I looooove
doing it because it’s a great opportunity to vent while still having fun. I was
thinking this last time, though, that I really ought to make an alphabet that
reflects the true spirit of veganism and all the priceless personal bonuses we
reap by adopting it. It was less delicious to write - because I was born to
snark, apparently – but more reflective of veganism at its best, which brings
so much good into the world and into our lives.

A is for alignment,
because our values are in alignment with our actions and that is a really rare,
beautiful thing. A is also for the animals
because we can look at them in the eye and know that we are not harming them.

B is for the benefits
of veganism, of which there are myriad, from health advantages to a very
reduced ecological footprint, and many points in between.

C is for consistency
and compassion and clear conscience, each of which is a
renewable resource that fills our lives with meaning and depth.

D is for direct,
because if you want to create a long-lasting, positive change in the world
immediately, compassionate living is a direct pipeline to it.

E is for that exquisite
feeling of knowing that we are laying the groundwork for a new world through our
actions.

F is for full
potential: We are not making excuses for ourselves because we are truly
striving to do our best.

G is for gratitude
that we can live as vegans today without making any sacrifices but reaping an
abundance of rewards.

H is for the hens
whom we get to feed, pet and hold at animal sanctuaries without feeling guilty
or ashamed.

I is for inexpensive
because the least affluent people in the world are often vegan by default: whole
grains, legumes, local and seasonal vegetables and fruits, nuts and seeds are
the most healthful way to eat (thus fewer doctor bills) and are usually much
more affordable than animal products and flesh.

J is for justice,
for knowing that we have integrated our convictions about fairness and equality
into our lives instead of just giving lip-service to them. J is also for the joy that comes from knowing this.

K is for kicking
the unnecessary habits that harm and kills others.

L is for love:
why would we kill when we could love and live with an attitude of abundance instead?

M is for more,
as in more inner-peace, more consistency, more gratitude, more honesty, more
passion.

N is for nomore disconnect between our deepest
values and our actions.

O is for our convictions, which give our lives purpose and meaning.

P is for the peace
we feel from practicing what we preach.

Q is for questioning
the status quo, which gives us so much strength and confidence to create
the compassionate, independent lives we want.

R is for rejecting
the habits that contradict our ethics.

S is for solutions:
we are living examples of people who are creating solutions to the destruction
animal agriculture wreaks and it also stands for the dynamic shift we are bringing to the world.

T is for truth,
because living with knowledge and self-honesty are liberating.

U is for undoing
the damage and the pride that comes from that.

V is for vegan
because that’s what it’s all about.

W is for wherever
we are, we can always do our best in that situation.

X is for X,
the mark we make on each day of the calendar until it’s our annual
veganniversary day of gratitude.

Y is for yes,
we can easily make a positive difference with our actions.

Z is for zealous
because sometimes we can be a little overly so but everyone has his or her
faults.It’s better to err in the
direction of passion over passivity, right?

Thursday, December 13, 2012

A kind of embarrassing truth about myself that I have
come to accept over the years is that I have a pretty cheerful, optimistic
nature. Why would this be embarrassing? As someone inclined toward the arts, with
a passion for the radical, a preponderance of black clothing, and the dark
coloring/pale skin combination that is such a perfect fit for goth-y
gloominess, I was always kind of an outcast amongst others of a similar bent. I
was born with a loopy (some would say zany) energy. I
definitely didn’t fit in with the pep squad but my temperament also clashed
with the perpetually sighing artists. What worked for me eventually was to find
friends who also defied categorization: depressive cheerleaders, happy poets,
stable performance artists, serene radical feminists. These friends have an
important place on my personal island of Misfit Toys and have made my journey
in life much less lonely.

Despite my essentially happy nature, though, I am
painfully aware of how much of the world rather, well, sucks. As vegans, we
know this all too well. Maybe the reason that I am pretty happy is that I’ve
always had an outlet. Whether I’ve been painting or writing, my thoughts have
been explored, processed and, finally, released. My annualDisgruntledAlphabet
is honestly therapeutic at this point and I fully encourage you to add your
favorite letters and corresponding gripes in the comments. We need to release
all this angst so we can get back to being the good examples we strive to be,
right? Or just to get it out of our system before embarking on a fresh new
year. In case you're thinking that I am making the case for why veganism sucks, I'm not. It is awesome but, as the expression goes, hell is other people. Maybe next week, I'll come up with a Cheery, Happy Vegan Alphabet for Optimists. For now, though, I present the 2012 Disgruntled Alphabet.

A is for Anatomy because, come on! Learn it. There is
a freaking world of difference between a tomato plant and a cow and NO, they
both don’t feel pain. We don’t live in a world in which we can pretend to not
know about sentience, neurological and circulatory systems, brain waves and so
forth. Anyone who asserts that plants feel pain – anyone who is older than,
say, five - is just illustrating how willing he or she is to abandon logic and
escape to the puffy, swirly kingdom of Magical Thinking [see M] instead.

B is for B.S., which I call whenever I hear a
variation of the “I was vegan for a week and then all my hair fell out, and
then my limbs atrophied, and then my organs started attacking each other and I
was put on life support because I have a really, really rare amino acid thing,”
story, which apparently happens more than would seem possible.

C is for the Caterer at the wedding, who very
thoughtfully and painstakingly prepared a spectacularly grey plate of boiled
broccoli and cauliflower on a bed of iceberg lettuce for your gustatory pleasure.

D is for Diversionary Tactics, which re-route us from
honest and thoughtful discussions about the ethics of eating animals to pulling
up a chair at the all-you-can-eat “lions-kill-gazelles-plants-feel-pain-what-about-the-Inuit-people?”
smorgasbord of random delights from Excuseistan.

E is for Eggs: I don’t care if they came from a virgin
meadow of the softest grass where the hens are serenaded by classical violinists
and gently massaged by the finest avian masseurs each day as they dine on
organic, free-range grubs and are lovingly tucked into bed each night by a
trilling Snow White herself. Eating eggs is unnecessary and exploitative but
keep dreaming up those sustaina-bull [see S] fairy tales all you like.

F is for Forgetting, because it’s embarrassing when
you forget that one of your friends is not quite vegan and it just dawns on you
after you said something pretty snarky about how gross it is to drink milk and
then it’s all awkward between you. Oops!

G is for "Get a Life!" which we are told that we don’t
have if we care about the billions of sentient, gentle beings who are abused
and slaughtered with each moment. Because one proves that one has a life by not
giving a damn, right?

H is for the Hassle you go through every year when family
members squabble over the annual dinner out together when your peevish great
uncle comes to town and you always end up eating a plain salad with nothing on
it at his favorite steakhouse anyway. You'd better be in that geezer's will.

I is for “I know that I shouldn’t say this to you, but
I couldn’t live without bacon.” Yes. You. Could.

J is for the Jack of All Trades who strikes up a
conversation with you about the Problems with Veganism at the annual company
holiday party: he’s a dietician, an anthropologist, a historian, an elite
personal trainer, a philosopher, a biologist and an expert on world cultures
all rolled into one. And you thought he was just an accountant.

K is for knife, which is yours but your roommate
sometimes uses it to cut meat and doesn’t see what the big deal is, anyway.

L is for Lighten Up, which we need to do because
needless suffering and slaughter isn’t really all that big of a deal, either.

M is for Magical Thinking, which brings omnivores a
whole host of interesting diversions, such as Plants and Their Feelings, All I Eat is
Happy Meat, Death is Life/Life is Death, By Eating Animals, I Am Showing My
Respect for Them and more. The realm of Magical Thinking is a shiny, happy
place that omnivores can skip off to whenever they don’t want to face the
reality of their habits. They can stretch out on a puffy cloud, float over a
crystalline pond and frolic with the glittery free-range unicorns any time they
like through their Magical Thinking escape hatch.

N is for Neurotic, because caring about what you put
into your mouth and spend money on is just so high-strung, isn’t it? Meat is a
metaphor for hot, carnal sex. We get it. We’re prudes. And you're a necrophile.

O is for Opinions, which we shouldn’t mistake for
facts, right? Like it is an opinion
that the life of a tomato and the life of a chicken are roughly equivalent
but it is a fact that plants and
animals have very different anatomies and physiological functions for
evolutionary reasons and purposes but let’s not let facts stand in the way of a
little romp in the land of Magical Thinking. Oooh! Glittery unicorns!

P is for Passive-Aggression, without which we wouldn’t
have hostile family meals, a persistent mispronunciation of the word vegan by your significant other, knowing
smirks between coworkers when you get the leather gloves in the Secret Santa
gift exchange, your brother-in-law describing veganism as a “lifestyle” with
little quotation marks that just seem so snarky with his stupid, mean fingers and
other really fun things like that.

Q is for Quack because, honestly, you can send me all
the wackadoo videos you want from that chiropractor talking about how soy will
turn boys into girls and how our “inferior protein sources” cause our brains to
shrink like thirsty little walnuts and how vegan children are all pre-diabetic
Children of the Corn and I still won’t believe you.

R is for Rights, which omnivores are pretty obsessed
with, as in their “right” to eat or do whatever they please as opposed to another
being’s right to live free from intentional harm. Clearly the “right” to a pepperoni
and cheese pizza is more worthwhile and valuable than a sentient individual’s right
to sovereignty and self-protection.

S is for Sustaina-bullshit because it defies
mathematics and basic logic to believe that you can eat as much grass-fed,
organic, free-range blah-blah-blah as you like without an ecological impact
as long as you buy it from cute little heritage farms. A form of Magical
Thinking, Sustaina-bullshit rewards those who want a reassuring little pat on
the back and cup of organic cocoa rather than more substantive actions.

T is for the Trauma of Thanksgiving. T is also for
Therapy.

U is for Unless you plan to bring your own food to
Thanksgiving, you can expect a dinner of cranberry sauce with a side of defensiveness
and a generous dollop of guilt-tripping. Okay, you'll get those extras even if you do bring your own food.

V is for Vermont: Weren’t we supposed to have a vegan
commune there by now? Near a mountain or a river or something and we’d all eat
massaged kale salads all day? Let’s get on that already.

W is for “Well, I was a vegetarian for ten years but
then I read that the Dalai Lama eats meat
so…”

X is for X-Ray vision, which you don’t possess but you
can still see the layers of subtext and insinuation buried within the offhand
remark of your cousin that she “doesn’t think it’s right to mistreat animals
but there are more important issues in the world and it's nothing to get all crazy about.”

Y is for Yay! Your new officemate just put up a Heifer
International calendar where you can see it every day! And your manager is
pressuring you to buy candy bars for her son’s elementary school fundraiser! And
you have to meet an important client for lunch next week and he’s on the Paleo
diet! YAAAAAY!

Z is for Zen. We’ll get there one day. Or we won’t.
Whatever. Is that Zen enough?

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Over the weekend, we saw Lincoln. I am always embarrassed by how
little I know of this critical time in U.S. history, so shot through with
upheaval. After seeing the film, I was especially struck by the character of
Thaddeus Stevens, someone I knew nothing about, played with a fiery but
believable zeal by Tommy Lee Jones.

Thaddeus Stevens was
chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means committee and a key Radical
Republican; by all accounts, he was consumed with such a profound and visceral
contempt for slavery, roiled by the thought of it, that he made it his life’s
work to eradicate it. Today, it’s easy to take an emphatic moral position
against slavery: is there even any reasonable counter-argument? In the 1860s,
though, with much of the country in ruins, no end in sight to the horrific
combat and hundreds of thousands of deaths already tallied, it was not such an
easy political stance, nor was racial equality considered a given. This was a
pivotal time in American history, one where the United States could have easily
fissured, but President Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens (among others) remained
deeply committed to getting the 13th Amendment ratified on the
Constitution.

Imagine the pressure.
Imagine the misgivings. Imagine the nights of sleepless anguish.

There were many times in
watching the film that I saw clear parallels to the uphill battle vegan
activists face in our struggle to have 98% of the population consider the
rights of others on moral grounds. There seem to be some obvious similarities
to the obstacles abolitionists faced. For example, those who wanted to maintain
the status quo depicted the anti-slavery campaigners as ridiculous, dangerous
and worse. White people were born with the right to own slaves as part of their
natural prerogative, after all, ordained by God. (Even many of those who didn’t
keep slaves still didn’t want to believe that slaves were as human as they
were.) Similarly, vegan advocates are often characterized as ridiculous,
dangerous and worse by those who want to maintain the status quo of animal
exploitation and use. Further, people of faith and atheists alike consider that
it’s a given that animals are ours to eat and use as we see fit. Whether they
say that this was what God decreed or they say, well, sorry but that’s the way
things are (in so many words), the bottom line is the same: the animals are ours
and we have every right to them. Interestingly, some justifications were also
similar, for example, the attitude among anti-abolitionists that they were
doing it for the good of the slaves, a kind of benevolence: what would all
those feeble-minded slaves do if they were suddenly freed? They would not be
able to fend for themselves, to feed themselves. Today, we hear the same flawed
rationalization for maintaining animal agriculture. If we no longer killed animals
for food, they would not only overwhelm our resources and land, they wouldn’t
be able to care for themselves.

I am not one who likes to
compare historic or contemporary tragedies to each other and say that one is
the equivalent of the other. I believe that this cheapens the suffering and
diminishes the individuality of those who have been oppressed. When a sentient
being is in anguish, the suffering is uniquely experienced by that individual.
For this reason, I don’t like saying what the animals experience is like
slavery or the Holocaust. This is not because “they’re just animals” but
because I think that doing so over-simplifies the specific anguish the
individuals suffered, whether human or otherwise. I do think that there are parallels, though, with
slavery: the concepts of ownership, of sovereignty, of emphasizing the powerful
majority’s “right” to the entitlements they want to preserve versus the right
of those not so endowed to simply live their own lives. In short, the chilling mentality of exceptionalism.

The essential questions we
have to ask of ourselves are also eerily similar: Where do we draw the line in
regards to another’s rights and why do we draw them there? Are the relatively
small forfeitures we make in order to end our role in harming another really
tantamount to giving up our supposed rights? Is something truly a right or did
we inherit it due to existing power structures that unjustly favor us?

The unfair and unnecessary brutality
against animals is not going to end unless the world begins to think in moral
terms about something as seemingly benign as ordering a chicken salad sandwich.
In the 1860s and before, it was considered laughable to think of the lives of
the slaves working the field and the moral implications of saying that another
being belongs to someone else. Today, we are told the same about the animals people like to eat and exploit. Why? To live with honesty and integrity, there are times when we
have to make uncomfortable reckonings with ourselves.

I truly believe that this
is our social justice movement of the day. Our blatant and unspoken acceptance of
the human domination of other animals is something that the overwhelming
majority of people don’t want to face. If some comparisons make us feel
uncomfortable, though, that may be a signal that it is something to explore. Within
this discomfort, we can reveal a painful truth: there are more similarities
than differences between the mentality that allows for slavery and the
mentality that allows for eating animals than many of us would care to admit.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

While I was marching against the
fur industry last Friday, I was told to “get a life” by a passerby with several
big Macy’s bags, just as I have been for about the past fifteen years. Some
years they have Bed, Bath and Beyond bags, other times bright bags from
American Girl, occasionally H & M or Bloomingdale’s, often a clashing mix
of bags from different places on both arms. What I think I am to infer from
this casual comment from this stranger (and all the ones before him) is that I, fully
ambulatory and not on the hunt for brains, nonetheless lack key inner qualities
that constitute what Mr. Macy’s would consider a life. People have also said
this to me when I was protesting wars, and when I have spoken out against
violence in general, and it’s always pretty predictable: a muttered comment as
someone rushes past, meant to be heard but not meant to be discussed.

It’s a shame that they always
hurry by so quickly, though, because it never ceases to make me wonder: what is
a life? What does it mean to be alive? Most important perhaps: how does someone
“get” a life if he or she is not in possession of it? I figured that those able
to identify those without one must certainly have one, so I decided to look to them to find examples of how we
can know that someone has a life.

I was expecting it to be more complicated but I found a really simple and clear answer.

People with lives shop, especially on Black Friday.

Apparently getting
statisticians at the National Retail Federation to rock back and forth on their
heels with delight by pushing, elbowing and stampeding to grab DVD players,
flat-screen TVs, tablets, towels and sweatshirts is confirmation that one is in
compliance with life-having. Individuals imbued with the powers of animation
offer ample evidence of their aliveness by driving in circles around parking
lots, stalking exits for shopping carts, shouting directives at family members
with the ferocity of an especially cranky General Patton, and basically
pummeling or trampling anyone who happens to get between them and a toaster
oven at a deep discount.

More cautious
life-possessors shop at places with generous points of entry. The real rogues
go to the stores with the individual doors.

How do you know that you
are alive? Your adrenaline hormone has been released, prompting muscular and
circulatory action.

Just try to stand in a
line in the middle of the night facing a shopping emporium if you’re not alive.
I’d bet that you couldn’t do it.

Being alive means that you
participate in shared experiences with others of your species.

It also means that despite
being a driven, eyes-on-the-prize kind of person, you are smart enough to know when to combine resources
for mutual benefit.

One’s ability to push and point
a shopping cart toward a particular destination is further evidence of possessing
life-having properties.

If you don’t feel that
fire in the belly to get what should be yours – and to push, punch, elbow and
jab if necessary to get your hands on it – that should be a red flag, alerting you to look into whether or not you
were endowed with a life.

You could ask yourself the
following questions:

Do you care about others,
even when how they are treated has no real bearing on you personally? You need to get a life.

Do you speak out against
cruelty and injustice, even if your views are unpopular and unwelcome? You need to get a life.

Do your core values inform
your actions despite how poorly you fit in with mainstream society? You need to get a life.

Hot damn, I think I have
my answer.

Were the people I
encountered necessarily correct in saying that I need to get a life? I don’t know, but if I had a dollar for each
time someone told me that I needed one because I care about others,
I might have the money together to actually purchase one at Best Buy. (Which department
do you think it’d be in?) At the very least, I could stand in a giant crowd of
agitated, aggressive people and give it my best try.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

It’s
that time of year again. Thanksgiving is supposed to be about family, abundance
and giving thanks for the harvest and yet a certain fringe group of people
insist upon making it all about themselves and their own selfish agenda year
after year. They practically ruin the holiday, too, with the rest of us having
to be careful to not upset them.

I’m
talking about the omnivores, of course.

Once
again, they will show up at your beautiful vegan Thanksgiving meal and expect
to be fed. They are so presumptuous, too: it’s as though they expect their hosts to
bend over backwards, catering to their unreasonable, finicky and downright
bizarre dietary whims. Most of what they eat seems to be the stuff of fiction. I
can’t even keep up with what they do or do not consider edible. Pigs? Cows?
Chickens? Lizards? Cardinals? I have no idea. So many weird things that they
eat, such peculiar habits they maintain. Omnivorism is like a cult. It’s as if they’ll
eat anything.

They
will show up, too, because inevitably your niece or your neighbor or your son
will know an omnivore who is all alone on Thanksgiving and you will open your
home to him or her because you are a generous person. It’s always a disaster,
though. The omnivores are so conspicuous whether they try to draw attention to
themselves or not, making everyone uncomfortable with their mere presence. We just
want to enjoy our delicious meal in peace and yet there they will be, reminding
us of all those unappetizing things that we don’t want to think about,
especially at Thanksgiving.

Can’t
they just give it up? Gah! So strident.

No,
instead of being like everyone else, they’ve got to make it all about them and
their extreme lifestyle. I swear, half of them do it just to get attention. To
keep the peace, though, we have to just deal with it. What upsets me, though,
is that the omnivores act like their weird habits are more important than
my traditions. Having a vegan Thanksgiving is a beloved custom of mine. I really
don’t care if honoring my family’s traditions is offensive to others but they
insist that their ridiculous habits also be respected. Isn’t that unreasonable?
And they seem to want the rest of us to feel guilty that they’re in the
minority. How is that my problem? Next thing you know, they’re going to want
their own Thanksgiving parade or something because la dee dah, they are just so special and unique.

My
advice to you? Just ignore them. Let them keep living in their little fantasy
world. If they try to engage you in a debate, change the subject. It’s their
fault that they have chosen to be so removed from reality but you still don’t
want their bizarre lifestyle to take over your lovely event. Take control.
Smile and ask them to please pass the sweet potatoes.

You
don’t deserve to have your holiday ruined because of an omnivore at your
Thanksgiving table. Enough is enough.

Friday, November 2, 2012

“The
moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth
that is in us, and from the motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the
divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.” Elizabeth
Cady Stanton

I was born a feminist. I’m not sure where
it came from – perhaps my dynamo of a grandmother, confident to the core – but growing
up, I never thought that I was anything but a complete equal to everyone else. I was
a natural feminist and when I learned that there were was a real need for it -
that there were those who believed in arbitrary, illogical and repressive hierarchies
- the fire within me to correct injustices was found its fuel source. When I
saw kids throw rocks at squirrels, heard people make bigoted remarks, witnessed
others being treated unfairly, my hands would involuntarily ball up into tight
little fists. Even if I wanted to keep quiet, to not attract the ire of that
bully down the block who threw rocks at the squirrels or the loudmouth at the
bar years later, I physically couldn’t do it. It’d be like asking a volcano to
please not explode. My feminism and my passion for equality and fairness were
always fully interwoven and integrated.

Now here is the sad part, the whole falling
out between me and mainstream feminism that left me so disappointed. I will
concede that maybe I’m naïve. It’s quite possible that I’m just out-of-synch with
the world around me. I have come to accept that I am stubbornly idealistic
sometimes. This is all possible.

But…

When I came of age as a feminist in college
the idea of intentionally adopting a patriarchal system of oppression was unthinkable.
This is not to say that I was perfect by a long shot: I have a virtual walk-in
closet chock full of skeletons just accumulated from the Booze Era of my life
that lasted from ages 19 to 26. Even with a mean hangover, though, the idea was
that I was trying to dismantle vicious systems of tyranny, not benefit from
them. The thought of consciously participating in a fundamentally unjust and
violent power structure once I knew about it would have been akin to keeping
slaves simply because I could.

Animal agriculture is a historically and
essentially oppressive one, one that asserts at its very root that “what’s
yours is mine” if you don’t happen to be a human. Your milk, your eggs, your
life. This is an entrenched patriarchal conceit, born of domination, and the
idea that women, feminists at that, would accept this particular status quo is
strange and troubling to me. That they would adopt it and wrap it in the
parlance of quasi-feminist empowerment is especially unsettling. Yet I see
photos of women with weapons standing over dead animals, grinning victoriously. I
read grandiloquent accounts of slaughter, including one in which a woman was
quoted as saying that she felt like “a goddess, an Amazon” after killing a
chicken with her own hands. (Oh, and a knife.) I hear women speaking with
obvious pride about shooting deer, killing the animals they have raised,
taking them apart from limb to limb. Less overtly inspired by bloodlust, I know of
avowed feminists who could “never” give up “their” cheese, who don’t pause to reflect
on the lives of the chickens on the plate in front of them at their favorite
Thai restaurant, who say that they consider their preferences first as a matter
of self-empowerment.

Here is the thing: when feminists are
accepting and embracing the tools of oppression, it’s time to reevaluate
things. Ladies, you have co-opted your own feminist principles and replaced them
with maintaining your comforts instead.

Feminism is a social justice movement, one
that asserts at its core that females are equal to males. No one deserves
violence, injustice, suppression, and inequality simply because she was born
with X and Y chromosomes, just as no Jews deserve persecution just because of the
lineage they were born into or people of color deserve it because they are not
Caucasian. We know this. Why are the animals people exploit and kill – those who
were born to circumstances outside of their own control, just like all others – excluded from the sphere of consideration by otherwise thoughtful, kind,
and progressive people? Because unrestricted access to animals is their right,
damn it, and they will guard this privilege to the finish.

Feminism is about many things and it
differs from interpreter to interpreter. I get that. If feminism implies through word and deed (or is also complicit by the lack thereof) that
some females are more equal than others, though, this crosses into the
troubling mentality that supports slavery and selective, self-serving habits
over moral consistency. When females of different species are forcibly
impregnated and have their babies and milk taken from them in an enforced cycle of pregnancy and birth until they are considered worthless, that is a
crime against them and it is gendered. This is institutionalized, state-sanctioned
violence and exploitation. Wouldn’t a feminist naturally take a stand against
such abuse? Wouldn’t a feminist naturally not aid and abet such heinous
cruelty? Wouldn't a feminist naturally disavow such distinctly unenlightened and unnecessary violence?

I am a feminist because I believe that all
beings were created equal. I am a feminist because I reject the common
practices of patriarchal violence, no matter how culturally ingrained they
are and beneficial they might be to me. I am a vegan because I am a
true blue, proud feminist. We have to be honest to ourselves and honest to each
other: are those of us who believe in social justice going to go the
distance for others or are we just going to remain in our own comfort zone? Are
we going to be fearless as we create this new world order or are we going to accept
business as usual, choosing comfort over challenging ourselves to be true
champions for sovereignty of the body and spirit?

Despite how disappointed I have felt by
other feminists over the years, I am still one in my heart and soul. This won’t
ever change. I am just ready for other feminists to step up to the plate and
take the animals off of it. We have to never let go of a commitment to tenacious
compassion.

We are the ones. The future of the world
rests in the hands of the powerful and fearless vegan feminists.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

I was originally drawn to her because of the rare
quality of her breeding. The moment I saw the young female, I knew that I was
the perfect person to be entrusted to see her through to the end.

I had had a young female the year before, a close
relative of hers, and her fine heritage took me aback. She spoiled me for life:
I couldn’t go back to having those of an inferior caliber again. When it was
time that I wanted to have another one, I knew I wanted one of her pedigree
once more, but I didn’t want to just be a passive bystander in her death again.
Something within me needed a different experience. This time, I had to actively
participate in her death, until her last shudder, and follow that through to
her complete disassembly. The entirety of the young female would be used very
purposefully and with great intention.

She had been born into a life of high standards. Being
a rare creature myself, I recognized this in her. There are too many females of
interior genetics, ones who are common and low born, and this one was cut from
a different cloth. She was special and lovely and she had to be that way in
order for me to consider having her as mine. Of course I wanted to see how she
lived so I would have a deeper appreciation of how she was to die.

I wanted her parts, the internal organs, her
viscera, the blood of her, still fresh and warm. I wanted her tender flesh, cut
from her with my trusted instruments and pulled with my own hands. I wanted to
understand the elegant, clever design of her before I consumed her, and I
wanted to break her down personally. I wanted to find creative uses for every
last inch of her so her life wouldn’t have been taken in vain.

Seeing her in out her natural habitat, breathing in
the crisp autumn air, I knew that I made the right decision. She wasn't like
the others, the poor, pathetic creatures that have been so damaged by poor
genetics and circumstances. This one was different. She was a perfect specimen
of her variety, a natural female, her pretty cheeks warmed by the sun to a golden
peach. This was a young female who had felt gentle breezes blowing through her auburn
hair, who had never been mistreated by course, rough hands, who had dined on
organic blueberries she’d plucked from a neighbor’s garden with her own
graceful hands. I insisted that she live no less of a life before I would take
it from her.

That day, I spent an hour getting to know her and
she seemed to trust me from the start. I rubbed her shoulders, and I touched
her hair, warm from the sun. She was playful, affectionate, spirited. She
smiled easily, clearly enjoying this life, and she had no idea of my
intentions. This began to make me very uneasy but I told myself that it was
better this way, better that her life would end with someone she trusted rather
than at a stranger’s hands in an unfamiliar, cold setting. This was much more
humane. Breathing deeply to keep my emotions in check, I held her hands in
mine. I looked my young female in the eye. I told her that I was grateful for
what she was about to give me. I may have even shed a tear. I have consumed
countless young females in my lifetime, but being there then was a deeper,
richer experience, though one fraught with tension. I wouldn’t have traded it
for anything in the world.

In the end, her death was astonishingly quick and
easy – two quick bullets - which is fortunate because there was no time to
waste.

First I carefully undressed her and then I began
collecting my blood. I’d never had this before so it was a priority. I had to
make that everything was positioned right to bleed my body properly, otherwise
all that good blood would be squandered. It was a struggle propping everything
correctly and I questioned whether I was cut out for this work but in the end,
I was successful and I am very glad that I had the persistence to see this
dream of mine – fresh blood – realized and that I didn’t quit.

That task completed, there was a lot of work ahead
of me, which meant scalding, scraping, cutting through fat, muscles, tendons,
and tugging out organs. As repulsive as it might sound to an outsider, it was a
breathtakingly clean and methodical process, breaking down the body bit by bit and
seeing how the organs looked and felt close up: the heart, the kidneys, the
bladder, one by one, I observed them with the cool-headed precision of a
surgeon and gently placed them in my container. The bright pink lungs in
particular, lungs that just a short time ago had breathed in the same cool fall
air as I, were especially noteworthy. She did not disappoint.

Separating the intestines from the fat and other
tissues meant that with just a good cleaning, I now had sausage casing
that I had pulled from a body I chose with my own hands and technical skills. It
was hard to not feel prideful pulling out handful after handful of healthy
intestine. This makes it all worthwhile,
I thought to myself as my organ container continued to fill, steam slowly rising
from it. The young female was no longer of this world but all these different
parts and pieces would extend her far life beyond her reach as a living being. The
incredible responsibility I felt of needing to continue to provide stewardship
for the young female even after her death was a profound realization.

After she was fully broken down and stored
properly, I felt I owed it to myself and to her to finally enjoy the fruits of
my labor. Carving bits of her flesh on my butcher block, I was able to quietly to
reflect on our symbiotic relationship: she gave her life to provide nourishment
for me and I was able to consume her with true appreciation for her fine
quality. We gave this to each other.

In a beloved cast iron skillet that once belonged
to my grandmother, I sautéed delicately sliced pieces of her flesh with minced
garlic, baby carrots, parsnips and fresh purple basil and thyme from my garden. The scent of
her filled the air: rich, savory, mouthwateringly alluring. A splash of her
blood to thicken the sauté was an inspired improvisation, I think.

Sitting down to finally enjoy the meal I’d created,
I knew that I had made the right choice. She was tender but perfectly
substantial, sinewy in certain places but nicely balanced by her delicate
texture. Her flavor so effectively captured her essence that at times, it was
as if she was still with me, sitting across the table from me, her hair
glinting in the candlelight. I toasted her spirit.

In all, it was a beautiful, bittersweet experience.
I couldn’t help ruminating on how she slumped back with that first bullet, the
look of shock and horror marring her perfect features along with the spray of blood. I thought of how much
work it was to collect all the blood, how exhausted I felt, pulling out the intestines
but how I had to do right by this young female. She would live on to be my
steaks, sausages, burgers and bacon for the year as well as provide bits for stew,
gravy, casings and so on. I think she would be proud to know how very well used
she would be.

After this experience, I will never again take
another’s life and death for granted. When it comes time for me to harvest
another young female, I will bring this same intentionality and poignancy. It will be my gift back to those who give me their lives and it is my gift to myself. I
will do right by all the future young females who will grace my butcher block.
You can count on that.

_________________________________________

If you think that this is extreme, please read this
first hand account of the slaughter of a pig by popular Chicago butcher, Rob
Levitt. With me just making one simple, easy switch of who the victim is,
suddenly it’s evident that the story was written by a psychopath, despite the key
details remaining essentially unchanged.

The self-aggrandizement, as well as the perfectly clinical
and Hannibal Lecter-esque narrative, were deeply disturbing to me in Rob
Levitt’s essay. It is one thing to mindlessly eat animals. It is another thing
to romanticize the special flesh you consume, to repeat the narcissistic myths you
want to think that eating it says about you. Make no mistake, it is the mindless
consumption that is creating the immense death toll of ten billion land animals
in the U.S. each year, but it is this arrogant, self-serving mentality of
entitlement that is so pervasive among Happy Meat enthusiasts that I find
deeply chilling. It is also what has me thinking as a satirist.

If my essay was disturbing to you, that is a good
thing. It means you can still feel. Thanks to Nicole from Upton's Naturals, a dedicated vegan protein company, for bringing it to my attention.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

“There is nothing
like a dream to create the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow.” Victor
Hugo

Sometimes it can be nearly impossible to see the big picture
because, as advocates for animals, what we are looking at is pretty bleak. Speaking
personally, it is never far from my mind how much needless suffering, barbarism
and destruction is happening and, with each moment, how much more is to come. Each
second, babies are stolen from mothers, innocent beings suffer in confinement, bolts
are shot into brains, knives are slashed across necks. The despair from knowing
just how easily it could all be prevented if people simply acknowledged the
injustice of the violence and decided to give a damn is difficult to mitigate. Those
of us who are awake to what is happening feel the senseless pain of it so
deeply, and because of this, we are not always aware of its counterpart: the slow-but-steady
grassroots shift that is occurring in tandem. Just as stop-motion photography reveals
dramatic transformations due to subtle metamorphoses that are imperceptible to
the human eye, the vegan movement has been making strides in recent years but we
often need a something different – an altered perspective, a fresh lens - in
order to notice it.

I have been vegan since 1995, a time when I would gasp and spontaneously
erupt into a happy dance if a café had soymilk. With my nature being much more inclined
to enthusiastic outbursts rather than, say, doing the professional poker
circuit, I’m sure I startled many a coffee shop patron deeply engrossed in that
new Sartre biography but I didn’t care. Even though I have always very much
disliked the taste of coffee (the word swill
comes to mind), I would hold my nose and suffer through a sip or two just so I
could enjoy the novelty of coffee with milk in a café like a normal person. (This is pretty much
where my desire to be normal begins and ends.) In 1995, even in a large,
multicultural city like Chicago, vegans didn’t have much but it was just beginning
to trickle in. The landscape has transformed before my eyes since then.I wish I had stop-motion photography to
illustrate this. In retrospect, we were on the cusp of a sea change that is
really still in its infancy. The wave of change has just begun gathering strength,
but, have no doubt, it is happening and nothing can stop it.

If 1995 had a vegan pastry mascot, it would be dense, beige,
heavy and could best be described as “roughly muffin-esque” but my activist
friends and I would still be turning cartwheels in the streets for it. Contrast
that with my son’s experience 17 years later. Over the summer, we went to a cute
West Coast-based cupcakerie that opened an outpost here. I was struck when my
son initially turned up his nose at the pretty red velvets, sniffing, “They
only have one vegan flavor?” Despite
being one of the most distinctly unreserved children I know - the spontaneous happy dance gene is
inheritable, apparently - you still have to get up pretty early in the morning
to impress my born-and-bred herbivore with your vegan culinary creations. This
is how much the environment around us has changed. When my son seems a bit too comfortable
with the easy-peasy vegan world he was born into sometimes, I make him listen
to my equivalent of the old “I used to walk ten miles barefoot in the snow to
school” saw, telling him that there was a time not too long ago when vegans
couldn’t just walk into any ol’ bakery and expect to find a pastry they could
eat. (“Imagine the hardships your stoic forebears faced.”) And we may not
have been barefoot in the snow but our poorly constructed, plastic-y shoes came
from catalogues that were archaic even at the time. Except for those who could
afford expensive imported shoes from England, we may as well have been barefoot
in our porous boots in Chicago in January but we didn’t complain because at least we had vegan shoesfinally, for god’s sake, and they weren’t
Converse, either.

Of course, the changes are not just better access to higher
quality cupcakes and shoes. I am not one who puts much stock in “humane” meat
or animal products, but the fact that this is a subject so many people are
bringing up in defense of their meat-eating shows something encouraging. While the
industry may provide another layer of fantasy and self-denial for omnivores to delude
themselves with, the fact that people want
to think that they are seeking out “more humane” animal products means that the
personal discomfort with the status quo of eating animals is now something
people are acknowledging out loud. This is a profound shift. No one was talking
about this 17 years ago, certainly not in the widespread way that it is talked
about today. Although I think that the happy meat sphere is a serious obstacle
to compassionate living that wasn’t there before, the urge to reconcile this
internal discomfort actually is cause for hope.

People are still eating ten billion land animals every year in
the US alone, though, as if it is our birthright, as if the burgers and nuggets
people eat were in fact grown in the patches shown in the old McDonald’s
commercials. We may be eating less meat in the United States but international
trends show an increased consumption throughout Latin America, Asia and Africa
as animal products become less expensive, more accessible and a new generation
of children develops an expectation of meat at nearly every meal. We are
decimating our oceans, practically dredging them of life. Our addiction to
cheap protein is altering this very planet. We have put our habits in the
driver’s seat, and they are actively steering us toward a frightening future. Fabulous
cupcakes and stylish shoes will not dull the sting of that reality.

The world is changing but not quickly enough. We need to go
out and be great examples of being vegan and we’ve got to proudly own it. We
are not doing the animals any good, nor are we slowing the ecological
destruction of animal agriculture, by silently minding our own business. If
speaking out about needless killing and destruction isn’t our collective
business, I don’t know what is. We need to become empowered to use our voices, talents
and passion for creating the world we want to live in because, quite simply, we
are the ones to do it and the world needs us to step forward.

This doesn’t mean shouting. This doesn’t mean shaming. This
means being honest, being humble, being inclusive, giving people the tools to
make it easier for them and empowering them to make positive changes. On our
own front, we should celebrate the small victories (so many great cupcakes!) but
expect to keep shouldering on: creating a massive cultural shift of the one we
are pioneering is not going to happen through anything but conviction and sheer
endurance. This is how waves happen. Keep pushing forward with certainty that
the world needs what you are creating and full of gratitude that you have this
amazing opportunity to be building something so fundamentally good, kind, just
and necessary.

If no one has said this lately, from the bottom of my heart,
thank you. Thank you. You are amazing.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Revisiting my previous post, I wanted to share some of the common myths and conceits that are repeated
to vegans as if they were truth. I am doing this sort of as a favor to those
who repeat them because, honestly, guys, you probably don’t realize the
regularity with which we hear them. And when we hear them, it’s all we can do
sometimes to be patient and not roll our eyes. You don’t want to be someone who
causes excessive internal eye-rolling, right? There are many, many more myths than the ones
listed here and many subsets of the ones I have, but you get the idea. We’ve
heard it all before.

1. Vegan food is expensive.

First I have to ask:
compared to what? Compared to fast food? Well, yes, compared to dollar menus of
hamburgers and fries, it is more costly on the surface, but the expenses of illness
and obesity more than offsets this. Time spent off of work waiting in doctor’s
offices, scanning drugstore shelves for anti-constipation remedies, or getting arterial stents inserted is expensive.

The next question is
if vegan food is truly expensive compared to meat and animal products. Quite
simply, it’s not.

The average price for
a pound of ground beef in July of this year was $3.085. The price for a pound
of dried organic black beans was $1.99 at Whole Foods. One cooks down and the
other expands with cooking. The poorest people of the world are often nearly vegan
by default. Let’s look at what they eat: Legumes. Grains. Seasonal fruits and
vegetables. Fresh herbs. Nuts and seeds. They are not eating organic, heirloom
goji berries at $15.99 an ounce. They are eating simple peasant food that is
grown close to home because that is the least expensive and most accessible. In
our own country during the Depression, we canned and froze the harvest to make
food less costly. The notion that vegan food is more expensive than animal
foods is simply not fact-based. It does cost more on the surface to be
discerning about what we put in our bodies but it is far more expensive down
the road to be unwell. Consider eating whole, unprocessed foods another form of
health insurance.

Please note that none of this is even considering the expenses our whole society takes on in cleaning up the ecological mess of animal agriculture.

2. Caring for animals prevents us from caring
about people.

This is a false
dichotomy born of an absolutist perspective. If one looks at the world through
an either/or lens, it’s a natural conclusion that advocating for some means
that we cannot advocate for others. In truth, compassionate people are compassionate people. Does someone
who kicks his dog have more of a reservoir of compassion for people than
someone who doesn’t kick his dog? We don’t turn compassion on or off like a
faucet and we are not born with a finite supply of it. The greater empathy you
feel for others, the more empathy you will produce. It is more like a muscle
than a supply. I would be far more trusting of someone’s willingness to care
for others who has demonstrated an ability to empathize and take courageous
action on another’s behalf. The people who feel we need to carefully parse our
compassion? Nah. Not so much.

3. Vegans are in a cult/engage in “group-think.”

Hee. This one is especially
amusing to me.

Anyone who knows
anything about vegans knows that you ask five of us the same question, you are
likely to get five different opinions (or maybe 18 different opinions), some
that may profoundly differ from one another. We will go to the mat on topics as
seemingly benign as to whether we will date non-vegans and go for the jugular
on the topic of what we feed our cats. The array of topics on which we will
loudly disagree is truly spectacular, almost a renewable resource:
whether to wear our old leather and wool items or give them away; whether or
not we will eat at restaurants that serve meat; whether vegans are allowed to
be motivated by health concerns over their ethical convictions; whether we
support incremental animal welfare measures or most assuredly do not. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is
no shortage of topics for us to vehemently disagree with one another on and
there never will be. We have no central leader, no agreed upon strategy and,
honestly, no overarching goal. One thing vegans would agree upon is that we do
not believe that it’s our right to abuse and kill animals. From there on out,
though, all bets are off.

4. We have to be 100% impeccably vegan about
everything our bodies come in contact with or else we are hypocrites.

You know what? We
lived in a flawed world. We live in a violent world built upon exploitative
systems. Have you noticed? There is animal-derived stearic acid in car tires:
even if you don’t drive, it’s in bike tires. Gelatin is used to make the non-digital
films people see. Those beautiful vegan cookbooks? Most likely, they are held
together with casein in glue. We get it.

We didn’t create this
mess and actually, we’re the ones trying to get us out of it. The reason why
there are animal-derived components in so much is because of the conceit that
animals are ours to use as we wish and because, well, after eating whatever we
can off of their bodies, there is a lot left over for people to make money off
of still. We’re trying to create a world in which we do not exploit others. We
are not there yet and the world is a complicated beast with many tentacles wrapped
around various forms of exploitation. We’re not going to extricate ourselves
overnight but at least the vegans are trying our best to minimize harm. Could you say the same?

5. Historically, there has never been a vegan
culture.

Ergo? And? We are blazing
trails, not creating historical reenactments.

There was never a
Christian culture before Christianity. There was never a culture of feminism before
pioneers created it. There was never an ecological movement until people started
it. We are not limited by the past: thankfully we have self-determination. While
those who are yoked to the past keep coming up with nonsensical excuses, vegans
are actively creating our own burgeoning culture that can make a difference now
and benefit future generations. What is more exciting and promising, having our
future hemmed in by history or boldly creating one ourselves?

6. If the world went vegan, what would we do
with all those animals not used for food?

This is where people
really start grasping at straws.

First of all, why do you
suddenly care about the tenability or sustainability of caring for billions of
animals at once? Were you concerned before about the giant, leaking fecal lagoons,
dead zones in the ocean, air pollution and horrific wastefulness of animal
agriculture? (And, oh, bonus points for gullibility if you think that the magic
wand of organic agriculture would make the giant footprint of massive animal agriculture
disappear. Ta da!)

Second, who on earth
said that the world would go vegan overnight? Is that at all likely? What
vegans are working for at best is a world that is shifting away from animal
agriculture and even the most optimistic, power-of-positive-thinking, cheerful
herbivore knows that this would occur gradually. Of course. The idea that we would wake up one morning after the Vegan
Revolution to chickens all over our front yards, turkeys in our trees, and cows
taking over the boulevards is absurd.

What would happen to
all the liberated animals if they are not born, bred and killed for our
interests? Well, something tells me that we have oodles of time to figure this
out. One idea: as demand eventually decreases and fewer animals are bred in
order to be made into food, the populations would decrease. As populations
decrease, we need less of the massive amount of land that is currently
earmarked for monocropping soy, corn, and wheat that is fed to all the animals
in confinement. Perhaps this land could be freed up for some of the animals to
live out their lives in peace. I’m not saying that I have the answers but I am
saying that we don’t need them yet. Because it’s not going to be overnight,
that much is certain.

7. What about all the SOY?! Vegans eat too much
soy and that is destroying the environment.

Okay, is it honestly logical
that vegans, checking in (very optimistically) at about 2.5% of the population, are creating all this
demand for soy? All those damn Boca burgers? Seriously? You know who is
responsible for the monocropping of soy? Omnivores. Omnivores eat the billions
of “food animals” who consume all that soy in their feed. So if you are really,
truly concerned about the environmental implications of soy, it’s simple. Do
what I do: go vegan and limit your soy consumption. Easy peasy. And contrary to
common opinion, vegans do not all eat tofu nuggets dipped in dairy-free mayo
with a side of soy jerky. I buy tofu maybe twice a month. Could the omnivores
say that they limit their soy consumption to this extent? (Oh, plus it’s
totally not an ethical argument. Do not be misled by this one.)

8. The life and death of a cow and the life and
death of a tomato are roughly equivalent.

Oy vey. Science was never my topic but I will give it a shot here.

One has veins and
arteries. One doesn’t. One has a central nervous system. One doesn’t. One has a
spinal cord with nerve endings. One doesn’t. One has a body designed by
evolution and natural selection to avoid pain and suffering. One doesn’t. One
has a thalamus. One doesn’t. One has a limbic system. One doesn’t.

Further, one is
forcibly impregnated. One isn’t. One has babies who are taken from her shortly
after birth. One doesn't. One calls out for them after they are taken. One doesn’t. One is de-horned, branded, and castrated without
anesthesia. One isn’t. One has the proven capacity for emotionally bonding with
her offspring and others. One hasn’t. One demonstrably suffers using an
empirical checklist of physical and observational yardsticks. One doesn’t.

If you don’t believe
in evolution and your beliefs tend toward Creationism, a Great Creator, Gaia or
a combination thereof, perhaps you can tell me why your compassionate creator designed
beings with a proven capacity to suffer and a clear desire to avoid
said suffering only to give them no possibility of escaping that pain. What was
the purpose of that? Where is the intelligent design or benevolence in that? I
would never believe in a creator who would be so cruel as to imbue such deeply
exploited beings with sentience and emotions only to have them needlessly
suffer.

One bleeds. One cries
out. One writhes in pain. Making cows and tomatoes (or chickens and pears or
any other animal-plant combination) peers in the capacity to feel and suffer shows how
willing some omnivores are to suspend critical thinking in order to justify
their habits.

9. Our bodies evolved to eat meat.

Evolution is an
ongoing process. It is not static. There is plenty to contradict the notion
that we are designed to eat meat (our teeth made for chewing rather than
tearing, our small mouths and jaws, our lack of claws, our long, pouched long
intestines) but I am not going to get into that. Evolution is, well, evolving,
and thankfully we have some choice in the matter. The fact that we can live
healthfully and abundantly without animal-based foods is all I need to know.

10. Native Americans showed their respect and
gratitude for the meat they ate. I am doing the same.

I think that cherry-picking
from various cultures in order to imbue one’s habits with
pseudo-spiritual values is really exploitative and self-serving. Here are some
other things native cultures have done: left their sick, disabled, wounded and
unwanted to die; gone hungry when food wasn’t plentiful; pooped in holes in the
ground. And on and on and on. How many other “Native American” habits do you
maintain? Or do you just maintain the ones that make you feel that your comfortable habits are spiritual in nature rather than entitlements?

If you want to feel respect
and gratitude for me, don’t kill and eat me. If killing me is how you show respect and
gratitude, well, then I’d rather not have it. I will just prefer sovereignty
and compassion, thanks. If you have to invoke some quasi-spiritual convictions that
you keep handy for justifying your habits, I’d say that this is evidence of
hypocrisy and, ultimately, disrespect for the cultures you claim to respect.